


Broader View

by Omorka



Category: Real Ghostbusters
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:46:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray slips away from the rest of the team to get a little perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broader View

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions events of "Apocalypse - What, Now?", "When Halloween Was Forever", and "Halloween II 1/2", but none of them are really spoilery. Originally written for the second Story Lottery at LJ.

"And $500 for equipment cleaning and maintenance fees," Dr. Venkman finished, handing their bill to the balding man in the expensive suit with a flourish. A ropy strand of ectoplasm chose that moment to lose its grip on his arm; fortunately, it flew off into the crowd of bystanders instead of splattering their client.

"This much for only two spirits?" The real estate manager adjusted his tie and glanced at the two smoking traps that Winston was securing in the back of Ecto-1. Before Peter could justify the invoice again, though, he sighed and dug through his briefcase for a book of checks. "I suppose we'll have to see if we're insured or not. At least this is itemized."

"Hey, we're professionals." Peter accepted the check and carefully slid it into the chest pocket of his jumpsuit, on the side that wasn't slimed. He turned around to the rest of his team. "All right, guys, are we ready to roll?"

"No." Egon scanned the crowd. "Where's Ray?"

"Ray? Wasn't he with you guys?" Peter frowned. He'd been acting as the bait again, which hadn't quite worked out - he'd been separated from the other three when they ran into the two Class Twos, and by the time he'd rejoined the team they'd already captured one of them.

"Yeah, he was right behind us," Winston replied. He reached for his radio. "Hey, Ray, where are you? We're about ready to leave."

"I'll join you guys in just a second, okay?" Ray's voice crackled back over the handset. "I just - give me a minute."

Peter exchanged a glance with Egon. "Hey, Ray, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Peter. I'll be there in a little bit." The radio cut off abruptly.

The other three looked at each other with raised eyebrows. "Uh-oh," they chorused.

\---

The door to the roof staircase was unlocked and slightly ajar. Peter climbed up the stairs carefully. He wasn't quite sure what he was expecting; they had both the spooks they'd come to bust, so it was unlikely that Ray was possessed. Still, he had the proton pack on, just in case.

A block of wood was wedged in the door onto the roof to keep it from closing all the way. It probably had an automatic lock. Peter opened the door just enough to squeeze through, stepping around the block to keep from dislodging it. Sure enough, there was Ray, sitting on the concrete with his knees drawn up to his chest, his face turned upwards.

Peter carefully closed the door, letting the wedge keep it open just slightly, and approached his friend, deliberately letting his boots fall heavily enough to be heard. "Ray, we've been looking for you for ten minutes. Something wrong?"

"Oh, hey, Peter. No, I'm fine. I said I was okay, remember?" The youngest Ghostbuster looked up at Peter and then gazed skyward again. "I just needed some time to myself to think, I guess."

"Sure." Peter glanced at the PKE meter he was holding. No sign of possession or other spectral influence, other than the ectoplasm they were both drenched with. Thank god. He hooked the meter onto his utility belt and carefully lowered himself down next to Ray. "Thinking about what?"

The sun was lowering itself into a puddle of smog to the west, turning blood-red in the process. Low, scudding gray clouds were drifting in from the Atlantic; above them, high, feathery clouds blew past on the jet stream, yellow-gold in the sideways sunshine. Ray's face seemed ruddier than normal, and his amber eyes almost glowed orange in the light. For a second, Peter wondered if the PKE meter had been wrong; then Ray blinked and sighed, and the reflection disappeared.

"I was wondering," Ray murmured, "whether we're doing the right thing after all."

"Huh?" Of all the things his buddy might have said, Peter was not expecting that one.

"I just - Peter, you missed the first one. That other one, someone needed to do something or it was just going to keep sliming people and smashing things; I don't feel bad about that one. But the first one - Peter, the ghosts know who we are and what we do, now. They're _scared_ of us." Ray swallowed, the muscles in his throat visibly tightening. "When we came out of the main office into the elevator lobby and cornered it, it didn't try to fight us or run away or anything. It just begged us not to hurt it. It said it would get in the trap by itself, just not to shoot it. Oh, Peter, it was _crying._" His voice quavered; Ray buried his face in his knees.

Peter was completely at a loss for words, a state with which he was not generally familiar. Awkwardly, he reached over and patted Ray's shoulder between the pack and the strap. "I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Maybe I could have talked it into resolving peacefully if I'd been there." Guilt stole across his features before he realized it and banished it again.

"I don't think so, Peter." Ray turned his head without raising it. "These were Class Twos; nether entities of some kind. I think you have to be native to this world - a human ghost, or animal, or an elemental spirit - to be able to resolve like that."

Peter nodded wordlessly. They really didn't have a good theoretical model for how that worked, but that matched their experiences so far. Behind him, the door swung open again, and Egon eased out into the open air.

Ray continued, "Have you really thought about what we're doing, Peter? I mean, rescuing people from monsters, that's awesome, that's what we're meant to do. Saving the city, the world - I wouldn't give that up for anything." He paused for a breath. The edge of the sun slid below the horizon; the wispy clouds above them deepened from gold to fiery orange against the azure sky, flames frozen in ice. "But the ones like this, who are really only guilty of trespassing - we act not just as cops, but as judge, jury, and jailer to them." His voice turned hard and bitter - a strange sound, coming from Ray. "That's what the containment unit really is, is a prison cell."

"That's one of the reasons I've been working on the dimensional portal again," Egon added as he sat down at Ray's other elbow. "I'm hoping that we can return some of the less dangerous nether entities to their own world instead of incarcerating them permanently."

Peter nodded. "I'll admit, I haven't thought about it much from their point of view, but I _have_ wondered what we're going to do in twenty or fifty years. We're basically sitting on a spectral energy bomb - Peck showed us that. We'll have to train new Ghostbusters to keep on after us, and to maintain the containment unit indefinitely. Whether there are still any new ghosts to catch or not, someone will have to keep that thing running even once the technology's become completely obsolete. It's like those monks in Greece - the instructions for fixing it will have to get passed down from generation to generation until they find a better solution."

"If they ever do," Ray added morosely.

"I don't think we'll have to wait for future generations," Egon offered. "At least, I hope we won't. I think we can develop at least a partial solution ourselves."

"I hope so," sighed Ray. The low clouds were rimmed with pink and orange; the high ones had faded to fuchsia, and the blue of the sky was rapidly darkening behind them. "Can you imagine what a sentence of life imprisonment would mean to an entity that will never die of old age?" He shuddered. "I'd rather be disintegrated."

"Don't say crap like that," Winston's scolding voice came from behind them. "You would not, either, Ray. You'd keep trying to escape, no matter how hopeless it looked; every time they patched one route, you'd look for another." He crouched at Peter's left shoulder. "And that's what I worry about, honestly. A few of them have managed to find ways out of there, and we've got some guys with pretty powerful mojo in there. I think the only reason we haven't had more trouble is that they're too proud to work together."

"Those are the ones I _don't_ feel bad about locking up indefinitely," Ray said slowly. "Although some of them - I mean, look at Samhain. Two thousand years ago, he was a spirit of night and harvest, the thinning veil and the coming winter. That's scary, but there's nothing _evil_ about it. He was just a nature spirit. It was the force of human belief during the Dark Ages, the belief that nature was inherently corrupt and sinful and that the old pagan harvest rituals were evil, that changed him into what he is now. He can't have had the pumpkin-head until the 1600s at the earliest, and he's way older than that." Ray looked back at Peter. "If belief could change him that way, could it change him back? If enough people believed he wasn't evil, Peter, do you think he could be - rehabilitated, I guess?"

"I don't know, Ray." Peter thought about it for a minute. "I don't - I guess I'm gonna have to go with Egon's bit about not speculating when we don't have any data to speculate from." His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he pondered. "But if human imagination and belief could create spirits of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty out of nothing, I imagine they could change an already existing spirit, too."

"Some spirits are beyond rehabilitation," Egon stated flatly. Winston nodded in agreement.

"Oh, I don't think they all could be. I know we're going to have to just - just be jailers for some of them forever." Ray looked up into the deep blue of the sky overhead; the purple glow was fading over New Jersey, and the clouds were gray again. "But I hate to think of all of them being like that. It's a prison that no one ever gets out of, right now."

Egon put one hand on Ray's arm. "Ray, if you'll help me work on the portable containment projection field, I think we can send these two through the dimensional portal back to the Netherworld. I agree with you that they're not dangerous enough to incarcerate permanently, and no good can come of exposing them to some of the more malicious spirits in the containment unit."

"I'd like that a lot, Egon." Ray smiled, for the first time since Peter had come up here.

"Well, now that that's settled, let's get back to the firehouse, guys. It's getting cold up here, and the concrete's making my legs stiff." Peter hauled himself to his feet and extended a hand to Ray, as Winston did the same for Egon.

"It's hardly settled, Peter," Egon objected. "We've barely scratched the surface of Ray's concerns."

"That's okay, guys," Ray reassured them. "I know none of this is stuff we can solve overnight. I just - when that one started crying, it hit me all at once."

"Yeah, that kind of messed with my head, too," Winston agreed. "It was like I'd threatened to hit a kid or something." Egon nodded slowly in silent agreement.

"And now we're all aware that there's a problem we need to work on. I wasn't even there yet," Peter admitted.

"Well, thanks for listening to me, then." Ray stretched out his hands, pulling the other three into a group hug around him. Peter felt him relax as his friends' arms circled around him.

"Okay, I'm ready. Let's go home," Ray said, as the evening star glimmered above them.


End file.
